About Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for the Discworld series of about 40 volumes. Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971, and since his first Discworld novel was published in 1983, he has written two books a year on average. His latest Discworld book, Snuff, was at the time of its release the third-fastest-selling hardback adult-audience novel since records began in the United Kingdom, selling 55,000 copies in the first three days.
Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s, and has sold over 70 million books worldwide in 37 languages. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US.
Pratchett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children.
In December 2007, Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Subsequently he made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust, and filmed a programme chronicling his experiences with the disease for the BBC.

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to “put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty to reporting”.Thus, if a legend told of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would hastily add “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a loony, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like: “His mighty steed was fast as the wind, on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” any loose talk about a beloved having a face that could launch a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed own a very large seaport. Patrician Olaf II was eventually killed during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The Pen is mightier than the Sword”.In his memory it was decided that the proverb would from now on include the phrase: “only if the Sword is very small and the Pen very sharp.”

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

Gnomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse. That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them. The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a gnome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen... Wings